


John is Such a Common Name

by shiverfawkes



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, First Kiss, Light Angst, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-23
Updated: 2018-11-23
Packaged: 2019-08-28 08:54:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16720248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shiverfawkes/pseuds/shiverfawkes
Summary: In a universe where the name of your soulmate is written somewhere on your body.





	John is Such a Common Name

**Author's Note:**

> cliché? you bet  
> overdone? I'd say so  
> bad? most definitely  
> shit? flipped  
> hotel? trivago
> 
> enjoy!

“Do you know how many people there are in England called John, Mycroft?”

“Brother mine, Greg is just as common. Stop complaining.”

“Do you ever brood? Or do you always just look like you are?”

“Unpleasant disposition allows less human interaction, you are aware of such things, clearly.”

“Why on earth is it just a name? Why isn’t it a country, or a town, or something more than a stupid bloody first name that I’ll have forever because I’ll never find the right bloody John!”

“You aren’t even capable of love, calm yourself.”

“You don’t know that.”

“What’s got you so riled up then? You haven’t moaned to me about this in a while.”

“Because the John I moved in with is not the right one. Now we’re flatmates, and continuous exposure to one another is going to lead to some unwanted romantic ideas, and yet again I will have to look for a new flatmate. And for the _first_ time I will have to deal with the loss of a… Friend, I suppose.”

“How do you know he’s not the right one?”

“Because he didn’t show any signs of shock or attraction toward me when I told him my name.”  

“For the worlds only consulting detective, you are frightfully idiotic. Your name is William, at least it will be on somebody else’s skin. _We_ all call you, hell, _you_ call you Sherlock, but whatever John you’re looking for is searching for a William.”

“Oh, how helpful. I'm _so_ glad I learned this now, and not years ago when I was actually still looking. Of course I already knew that, you idiot.”

“I warned you not to get your hopes up, brother mine. We were cursed.”

“Clearly.”

“I don’t know how you’d expect him to ever find out what name is on your finger when you cover it with a ring. Maybe he thinks it’s on your arm now he’s seen those ghastly patches.”

“They help me think.”

“You’re a junkie.”

“You’re a wazzock.”

“Wanker.”

“Git.”

Sherlock gave up, and hung up with a frustrated huff, tossing his phone over onto the table from where he was lying on the sofa. He clearly wasn’t going to get much help from his brother, in all honesty he wasn’t sure why he thought he would. Though that point about his name was a good shout, it wasn’t like he could ask John what his name was, or where it was for that matter.

Sherlock had the unfortune that his name was written around his finger, so he chose to wear a ring in order to hide it, most people did after primary school, covering it with whatever they could. He felt sorry for those who had them on their faces, they were forced to wear makeup every day just to conceal them.

Some people didn’t abide the rules of the name written on their skin, and dated freely, Sherlock had seen websites for those people. There were also websites where you’d give them your name, and the name of your tattoo and they’d give you profiles for everyone named that in your area.

He doubted they worked anyway.

Besides, websites like that were a cesspool for date-rape. Considering his slender disposition and fairly attractive features, he couldn’t risk it, and he didn’t want to go through disappointment after disappointment either.

He hated the way his stomach lurched anytime he met or heard of somebody called John. It was the name they gave to unidentified patients for crying out loud, who would name their child something so common?

His brother’s name was written on the back of his neck. Which birthed the habit of wearing collared shirts all the time, the suits followed shortly after.

Sighing he pulled his shirt sleeves down, and reached his hand to the coffee table, feeling around for his ring. It was hematite, he’d had it since he was eighteen, upgraded from the simple steel one his father had given him. He liked it more, hematite was more subtle than the bright grey steel, dark grey, nearly black and sleek.

He gave an annoyed grunt as he slipped it back onto his finger.

No doubt John would be home sometime within the next hour.

He’d tried his best to be more polite in the beginning, and gradually ease John into the mess that would be life with him, if he did choose to stay.

He didn’t really see the point. He knew John, after that first night, he knew what the man was capable of and what he wasn’t. It didn’t seem any nicer to ease him than to throw him in head first considering he’s shot a man dead to stop Sherlock making a stupid decision.

If his tattoo was going to change, it should’ve changed then.

It’d been nearly a year since then, so many events, mishaps, close calls, all calculated of course. And it still hadn’t changed.

The name usually only changed once you did something fairly intimate with your soulmate. Some people, aromantics usually, changed the first time they met their soulmate. For others it was kissing, for most it was sex.

Considering Sherlock had considered himself asexual from age eighteen, given the sort-of-black ring he wore, he would’ve thought that John killing a man for him would’ve done something.

He just hoped whatever was added to his finger was something he liked, or something, whatever John he ended up with, liked. Though it was unlikely that he would ever find that John, so he should just get used to having it there for the next however many years he lived.

“I bought milk, what’re you doing?” Johns voice hit his ears, and he realised what was happening outside of his head once again.

He was sitting up now, elbows on his knees, twisting the ring around his finger.

“Sorry, thinking, put the kettle on would you?” Sherlock asked, standing up, and going in search of John’s laptop.

John gave a mock salute, walking to the kitchen. “Sir, yes sir. I thought I got invalided from the army?” He opened the fridge.

“Funny.”

“I try.” John replied with an amused hum, and the soft roar of the kettle sounded from the kitchen. The fridge opened. “A foot. _Why_ a foot?”

“Experiment.”

“Of course.” John gave another hum, which meant that he had something to ask but didn’t know how to phrase it just yet, and Sherlock ran through the list of things he could want to ask about. “So, your tattoo is on your finger, under the ring?”

This was the second time John had taken interest in his name. Asking If it was male or female, sherlock opted not to answer and instead chose to talk about the different types of ash he knew by heart, until John got bored and annoyed enough to leave him alone. “Clever, only took you a year.”

“I thought you were asexual at first.” John replied matter-of-factly.

“I am.” Sherlock smirked, typing his searches into google, a minor thing by any stretch of the imagination but if he was correct in his suspicion, it could be vital for one of the case files he’d stolen from Lestrade.

“Oh.”

“Yes, most people are usually alarmed. The whereabouts of my tattoo is simply convenient, two birds one stone, isn’t that the saying?” Sherlock replied, looking up to the shorter man, leaning against the table.

“That’s my laptop.” John spoke pointedly.  

Sherlock rolled his eyes, going back to his search. “Yep.”

“You aren’t going to ask me where mine is?” The doctor asked, the kettle had finished boiling and sherlock could hear the rattle of spoons and the pouring of water. They were now back at the topic of tattoos.

“Why would I? I can tell that its certainly not mine, so I have no reason, nor right.”

“Well I just deduced yours.” John replied.

Sherlock realised early on that John preferred things to be equal, he liked things to be fair. He considered Sherlock offering him to be his flatmate as a favour that would take a long time to repay. Which is why he did most things Sherlock asked.

He’d asked Sherlock’s. So now Sherlock _should_ , in theory, know John’s.

Sherlock didn’t want to know. Because once he opened up like this, it wouldn’t be long before he was asked what the name was, or before the ring came off in a chase, or before, god forbid, John took it off him in one of the rare times he was sleeping.

John would feel uncomfortable. Because the name on John’s finger was not _Sherlock_.

And if the elder Holmes was right, John would be gone before Sherlock could find out if the name the doctor had was William.

“Deduced? I’d hardly call it that. Would you like to tell me, John? I can smile and nod, pretend I care if that helps.” He spat, he hadn’t intended it to come out so harsh, but the words fell from his lips with more poison than he could help.

“Right, you’re in a strop. I’ll be in my room-“ He set down Sherlock’s cup of tea, so hard that it rippled, before grabbing his laptop. “ _With_ this. Call me when you’ve decided to calm down.” He replied. His voice was calm, but Sherlock knew he’d pissed him off.

He didn’t need the laptop now anyway, he was done with his search now, all he had to do was text Lestrade, take the lecture about taking case files and then he could continue fine with his experiment.

He didn’t know why but he felt bad almost. That had never happened before. Usually he enjoyed getting people riled up against them when they were being annoying.

But John wasn’t annoying him. He wasn’t frustrated or irritated when he’d said it.

He was… Scared.

Scared of what would happen if he did lose John. If he lost John before knowing what name was on his skin.

He’d insisted in Angelo’s that he wasn’t gay, and a plethora of other times since then. Obvious lie, well partially. If he wasn’t he could have easily showed or told the name of his tattoo to prove that he wasn’t gay, nor Sherlock’s date. If he wasn’t he wouldn’t have protested it so harshly.

John was bi, that wasn’t hard to tell, he checked out men just as much as he checked out women.

There was tons of biphobia in the world, given the fact that most names weren’t unisex. People who were bisexual were frowned upon considering that they were apparently only supposed to be attracted to the gender of their soulmate.

Sherlock didn’t agree with any of that, considering that aromantics still had soulmates, as did asexuals, and there was the rare case of the lesbians whose soul mates were gay men and they were platonically bonded.

If he was honest he was done with all of this soulmate business. He’d sworn to himself that he was going to stop obsessing over it nearly five years ago. He’d been searching his whole life, and after twenty-five years of looking and hunting for every John in the whole of England that could be his soulmate, he was done.

It had driven him to drugs and destruction, and he’d promised his brother he’d never let it get that bad again. So, he shut it all out, everyone, emotions, sentiment, hope.

He gave up.

But then Mike Stamford just _had_ to walk through that door with an attractive army doctor invalided home. An army doctor called John, no less.

John came down the stairs an hour later. “I ordered Chinese.”

“Thank you.”

John paused for a moment, staring at him. “…You’re welcome.”

“It’s on your shoulder. The one you were shot in.”

“How did you- never mind, I don’t want to know.” John laughed. “It’s still brilliant when you do that. Like magic tricks, you know there’s a method behind it but you never quite know what, so it still amazes you every time.”

“John.”

“Hm?”

“You don’t understand how sick I am of saying your name, hearing it, looking at it.”

John paused for a moment, furrowing his brow and pursing his lips before he looked up with realisation written clear as day on his face and Sherlock was so jealous of his simple mind in that moment. “Is that why we’re flatmates then. Is this what you do? You find people called John and ask them to room with you, so you can see if they’re the one?”

Sherlock rolled his eyes, an amused smile creeping onto his lips nonetheless. “No, too dull, too manipulative. I gave up looking five years ago, you needn’t worry.” He replied, shrugging. “Besides, even if it was, you don’t look to appalled by the premise, and if it was then why would I bother refusing to ask about your mark?”

“Right, I’m an idiot, sorry.” John replied, laughing, as he reached for the paper. “The name I have isn’t Sherlock, sorry, uhm, if you were interested.”

“Is it William?”

John dropped the paper into his lap, hand reaching to press against his shoulder, as if sherlock could see the tattoo, if it wasn’t completely obliterated by the shot. “Okay how did you do that?” He asked, slight annoyance in his tone, Sherlock wasn’t sure why, he at least knew he was correct.

“Do what?”

“There’s thousands of names in the world, that had to be a guess.”

“Five-hundred-and-twenty-thousand approximately, not counting spelling differentiations, and it was an educated one.” He replied, sitting up properly, intrigued.

“Educated how? I was blathering on about how I wasn’t gay, and how I wasn’t your date the other night, you didn’t even pick a _girls_ name!”

Sherlock smiled properly at that, feeling clever now. “Because my first name isn’t a girl’s name, nor is it Sherlock. It’s William.”

“But you-“

“My parents, like yours, insisted on making things a challenge for me, yes. I stopped going by William altogether, five years ago.”

“Well where do we go now!? I’m John, and you’re William. Our names haven’t changed since meeting each other and now the only other ways we can test it will make things awkward!”

“John, breathe, it’s okay. We don’t have to progress any further, I’m perfectly content to have you as my flatmate and nothing more.”

John stood up, laughing, bitterly, funning a hand through his hair, and licking his lips. “No, you aren’t, you’ll want an answer at some point, you’re willing to put your life on the line to get an answer so don’t try me with that bullshit.”

“Somehow, I now think you’ll be the one with dissatisfaction.” Sherlock replied, following suit and pushing himself to his feet, coming so close John had to tilt his head back to make eye contact with him. “Now if you want to stop your whining and kiss me, I wouldn’t be opposed.”

“Oh, you smartass git.” John replied, before yanking sherlock down by the shirt, crashing their lips together in a mildly uncomfortable clash of teeth and lips. It didn’t take long for a comfortable position to be found, with frantic breaths and now open mouths.

Sherlock’s hands found the small of John’s back, pulling him closer against him, and John talked his fingers in Sherlock’s hair, keeping him close.

The doctor jumped, stumbling back as a searing pain jabbed its way through his skin into his shoulder, he pressed his hand to it, to stop the bleeding, to cry out for help, but then steady hands were on his shoulders, and pale green eyes met dark blue. He was still in his living room.

Sherlock pushed him down into his chair, kneeling in front of him, trying to find the source of the sudden agony written in John’s features. “Breathe John.” He unbuttoned the doctor’s shirt, with nimble fingers, and John didn’t even protest the movement, his eyes were squeezed shut with pain.

Sherlock watched in amazement, as from the starburst gunshot wound in John’s shoulder, were the ends of a tribal sun, growing round the wound in a circular pattern, it was breath-taking.

A hot spike of pain burned into his finger, and he pulled his ring off, to see vines slowly growing from his finger down over his hand.

“You’re my soulmate.” He breathed, eyes flickering from his hand to John’s shoulder, to his chest as the tattoo seemed to spread out over it. The doctor’s eyes were still shut tight, but he wasn’t grimacing anymore. “John?”

“What? Sherlock?”

“Doesn’t that hold some kind of significance?”

“Yes of course it does, but I’m afraid I’m not here at the moment, I’m somewhere in Afghanistan being shot at. Gimme a mo’.”

John’s mind palace wasn’t one he could walk through. Sherlock had learned that after enough time.

He had a thought process, different to others, just as Sherlock did, but he couldn’t traverse it in the same way. Sherlock figured whatever way it worked was like a travellator, and he just had to stand their until he was brought to where he wanted to be.

When that travellator passed through Afghanistan, Sherlock knew he needed to have patience.

Sherlock waited for a moment, a moment of deafening silence but his heard beat in his ears. His ring was still clenched tightly in his other fist, and the hand with the tattoo on it was resting against John’s good shoulder, his thumb rubbing gentle circles.

Suddenly John came back to life, sitting up, and staring at Sherlock. “Yours is a plant, what’s mine?”

“A sun, it looks well. It works nicely doesn’t it? A plant and a sun. They work together, I suppose it’s supposed to be symbolic.”

“Oh my god.” John shook his head, smiling in disbelief.

“Please, call me Sherlock.”

John rolled his eyes. “What about William?” He replied, placing a hand on Sherlock’s cheek.

Sherlock placed his own hand over John’s, watching as eyes trained to the tattoo that had stopped growing up Sherlock’s hand, a small smile on his lips. “I will call you Hamish for the rest of your life don’t test me.”

“So, this is it then. This is us. Soulmates.”

“I guess it is. You don’t take issue with it?”

“No, you berk, not at all. I’m sorry for being hard to find.”

“I’m sorry for not seeing what was right under my nose.”

“That’s a first.”

“ _You’re_ a first.”

“So, can I kiss you again?”

“I don’t see why not?”


End file.
